The OTP
by Delathen
Summary: One April Night, there was but one true pairing to be lamented...


_**In all the world's oceans, there is but one pairing that descends to the depths.**_

氷山

The summers of 1908 and 1909 were beautiful. They blessed Europe with gentle sunshine and warm rain, and more than one lasting romance blossomed alongside the budding flowers.

The same was true in the cool, white-grey plains of Greenland, the place so nice Erik the Red named it for the jealousy he wanted his countrymen to feel at his good fortune in claiming it first.

But not all that were sun-kissed in these warm summers found their bonds strengthened.

On the ice shelf men had named Ilulissat, facing west across Baffin Bay to the new world, a small mountain of ice found its frosty relations with its neighbors warming. Amongst young couples and old gentry, this event would be celebrated and bring their community together. Amongst variably sized chunks of frozen water, this small mountain found itself slowly drifting, lost on the inevitable march to the sea.

Finally, in the summer of 1910, the small mountain broke ties completely and set out to find its fortunes on the high seas of the North Atlantic.

* * *

The journey of last two years had taken their tole on SS Ice. Once a proud creation nearly a mile in length, its grinding trek through the perilous waters had worn away much of its beauty, and it was a shadow of its former glory. Had it the presence of mind, it would have lamented it's sad fate, having lost so much of itself in its bid for freedom.

Finally, though, it was in the open ocean, and the path was clear for it to wander the world to find its fortunes. Smaller neighbors that had been made smaller still joined it in the travel, and the flotilla made good speed at 8 miles a day to their journey's end.

Some of the ice floes they passed warned of strange figures upon the waters, fish that would not dive and had skin hard as flinty rocks, on which many of their traveling companions had been broken.

But SS Ice feared no rumors, and resolutely continued its path. It needed no hanger-ons, and any that followed did so of their own volition. It would not be bound to one place ever again.

* * *

It was a dark night. The last months had seen even more of SS Ice lost to the currents, and at a few hundred feet to a side, it was a mere memory of the self that had made its way down the fjords so long ago. It despaired of ever finding the joy it had left all it knew behind to seek, but felt trapped in its path, certain that no other course remained. It could not remember the way back. The tides and flows of the ocean alone were its guide now.

From the fog came a peculiar sight: lights! Lights like bright stars brought to the ocean's surface. No ribbons of the aurora these – they were paired, as though each were tethered to the other, and the whole bound together tighter than the strongest bonds the iceberg had ever known.

The lights crept closer, and SS Ice felt for the first time in a long time the fluttering of hope. They seemed drawn to it, an attraction it had despaired of ever seeing aimed its way again.

Finally, they broke through the layers of fog to present themselves fully. The lights! They were on the most peculiar construct Ice had ever seen! Like a vast black log that had been cast adrift, it towered above the surface of the sea, with four vast cylinders belching blackness into the night sky. This close, Ice could feel and hear the vibrations as the black-and-white vessel flew through the waters at a speed it could hardly believe. No fish it had witnessed was half so fast, nor a hundredth so massive, not even the great ones that frolicked and blew sprays to the sky before diving so deep it could no longer hear them.

Ice was fascinated. This was the single most handsome thing it had ever seen, nothing in its home on the ice shelves or in the frozen oceans it had passed had been anything like this! It had to get a closer look.

It seemed the vessel thought the same, as it drew nearer like a bird seeking to land on Ice.

Only as they closed did Ice remember the warning of the other flotillas, of the rock-skinned fish that fragmented their friends.

It seemed the vessel too had heard such warnings, as it let out a frightful bellow and tried to turn it's course.

But like star-crossed lovers, Ice and the vessel found their paths intersecting, and finally colliding.

Ice ground along the great log, sending great rippling vibrations throughout its core. It felt the skin of its impromptu partner, harder than rock, give under its own great mass, and small pieces of itself be dislodged as at last they parted.

Ice felt a heat like it had never known before all along the length of it that had met the strange vessel. It was like the sun had burrowed under its surface, melting frigid bonds that held since the first flakes of snow that had started its birth long years before.

It felt this was a night to remember, and if it died tomorrow it would die as happy as an iceberg could be.

* * *

Ice saw another of the strange vessels in the next days, and though this one drew near, it did not touch Ice. Ice did not know if it should be happy, or feel disappointed. Ever since that midnight encounter, it had felt less solid than it ever had, as though all its world had been shattered at the leaving of the strange caller it had met in the mist.

* * *

It had been two weeks since Ice had met the Titanic, though it would never know that name. Ice had done it. Against all odds, it had reached the warmer waters of the great river of the Atlantic, which human sailors long before had named the Gulf Stream. And in the flow of such tropical heat, the remnants of the great mountain that had set out to find its fortunes years before found itself worn away and passing into the great ocean.

It would never know the legacy it would leave among the funny furless seals on the ship that had struck it, nor would it ever know the fate of its partner, that dark April night in the year 1912.

But it would feel no sadness at this though. After all, it had seen things it never though possible, and lived a happy, if short life, on the high seas.

Ice died content.


End file.
